I wonder just how much more it would have cost applications to use 4 digits instead of 2. I imagine a lot of this was just needless pre-optimization, especially as the years rolled by and prices went down exponentially.
You're showing your age (or lack of it):-)
Memory was incredibly expensive when a lot (although not all) of the "Y2K" applications were written and it was decided (correctly) that it was far cheaper to spend money on programmers, both at the time and before 2000, than on memory. Sometimes it even went beyond cost and it became physically impossible to run a particular program on a particular machine because the program wouldn't fit in the maximum amout of memory the machine could support. In that case it was a question of "lose 50 bytes or the payroll run won't happen",
Are you sure about that ? I don't have any facts and figures but I'd guess things are the other way around, if only because there are more EUians than USAians,
Now someone can steal a credit card and walk into a BestBuy or other store with expensive easily resellable items and make a major purchase and not have the payment method checked, there's the assumption that the person with the card and pin is the owner
In the same way that someone buying something with a dollar bill is presumed to be the owner of that bill. Are you sure that's really their money ?
No method of payment is going to be 100% secure, chip and pin is better than card and signature, but it's not foolproof. If you're careful, it is perfectly possible to use a machine so that your pin is impossible to know and, as long as you don't write it down anywhere, there is no way a thief is going to be able to use your card even if they successfully steal it.
On the other hand you could be like the little old lady I stood behind in the queue the other day. She pulled out a wallet absolutely stuffed with cash and proceeded to hold it up as she extracted the payment. She was about 5'1" and fairly frail standing about two feet from a significantly larger person who was a complete stranger and could have been Sid the psycho for all she knew. Common sense was obviously not her strong point (or she was the bait in a sting operation:-) )
If Windows really annoyed its users, don't you think there would be more of a backlash?
No, because Microsoft has managed to convince many people that it is normal for computers to crash regularly and perform in an incomprehensible way. People don't switch because "that's the way computers work, so if I switch to another computer running this 'Linux' thing that will crash too"
When a government is willing to imprison an innocent man for defending himself from criminals, you should certainly expect a jump in crime.
ITYM when a jury is willing to imprison someone for shooting a criminal in the back.
Tony Martin was convicted by a jury of his peers because he shot someone when that person presented no threat to him(he was running away). If he had shot both burglars when they broke into his house or while they were in his house, the chances are that he would have walked free or never even been arrested.
Whilst I have every sympathy for those householders who are persecuted by burglars as far as I am concerned killing someone who has failed to steal from me and is now running away as fast as they can is not the right thing to do. A warning shot over the head and comments along the lines of "come back here and I'll blow your head off" is a much better response.
What geeks don't seem to realize is that most people look at a computer as a machine.
Oh, I think we do.
And machines are supposed to make work easier. True
Proprietary software with many features makes work easier. Not always, sometimes the attempt by some proprietry programs to do everything means that they do nothing really well
Open source software, free as it may be, often doesn't have the features or ease of use that regular folks are looking for. True but then again sometimes proprietry software also fits that statement
They also don't get how some nerds equate software licenses with freedom fights for civil rights. I don't get how some folks swear blind that nothing Microsoft have ever done has been wrong. What's your point ?
Folks just want the best products. No. Most folks just want products that are good enough to perform the job at hand
If they're photographers they're going to prefer Photoshop to the GIMP. If they're authors they're going to prefer Microsoft Word to Open Office Write. If you play video games you are going to want Microsoft Windows and not GNU/Linux. Maybe if they are wealthy but if they only have a fairly limited budget for software and the GNU/Linux versions of software do what they need then they're unlikely to choose Microsoft alternatives are they ?
One of the most amazing things about the Free Software movement is that somehow a core of very intelligent people have somehow convinced themselves that acutally LOWERING their productivity by using incredibly arcane and user unfriendly applications Er, have you actually used any recent incarnation of Linux ? . . is in some way a GOOD thing and are simultaneously confused and bewildered that the other 99% of humanity disagrees.
I'm in no way confused nor bewildered thank you. I know there are very good reasons why the majority of people use Microsoft products, including myself. I do, however, think that Microsoft has, over the past decade, acted as a massive negative force on the pace of technological change in the computing industry and approve of the Open Source movement as a means to boot all the established computing companies out of their comfortable beds and back into the forefront of the computing revolution as well as a shining example of how lots of people co-operating sensibly, without the usual cut throat business tactics, can build something to threaten some well established but very unethical institutions,
I think you missed the point or didn't understand the word orthogonal.
Orthogonal, in this context, meaning unrelated the previous poster's point was that being American has nothing to do with ones political viewpoint, be it socialist or capitalist.
There are (shockingly:-) ) both American socialists and American capitalists,
Did your 30 UK days include : New Years day, Good Friday, Easter Monday, May Day Bank(*) holiday(x2) and the August Bank Holiday ?
My impression is that IT workers in the UK get approx 25-30 days paid leave plus the eight "Bank" holidays (or whatever they're called).
Cheers,
Jeremy
* Why are they still called bank holidays when the one industry which will ALWAYS have (at least some) staff working on those days is the banking industry ?
She thinks that's its suspicious that a Pamela Jones can overnight transform from someone with no contacts in the computer industry to a leading "expert" in the most decentralized area of the industry, open source.
overnight ? It's been two years since the SCO farce began and, in the beginning, Groklaw was just another little weblog run by someone with an interest in Open Source and a paralegal background.
And PJ is not a 'leading "expert"' on Open Source, her expertise is in interpreting legalese into plain English and it is that skill which has resulted in the widespread readership of her site.
She has been successful in cutting through the FUD spewed by SCO in their lawsuit with IBM and, because of that, she has won friends (and influence) throughout the Open Source movement.
PJ's success is mainly due to the fact that her readers, who I'd like to think are fairly intelligent, have realised over the past two years that she does her best to report things objectively and politely, something Ms O'Gara has spectactularly failed to do in her latest article.
Jeremy
Re:Take Your Corporate Apoglism Nonsense Elsewhere
on
SCO Missing 16,209 Files?
·
· Score: 1, Offtopic
OF COURSE we invaded Afghanistan.
Given that logic and the number of Saudis involved on Sept 11 I'm still wondering why Saudi Arabia wasn't top of the list of countries to be invaded ?
That puts me in mind of Nicola Bryant and Peter Davidson's complaint that everybody missed his perfect acting during his regeneration scene because she was leaning over him in a low cut top !:-)
Hopefully, this means that the BBC will keep turning out more of the kind of programmes that have made its name into a badge of quality and stop it getting caught up in the race-to-the-bottom-of-the-barrel that Sky and the other commercial channels seem to be in.
Amen.
I do wish someone would remind the current crop of BBC executives that they are not in the same business as the commercial channels. For the BBC the consumers are the viewers and the product is the programmes, for commercial channels the consumers are the advertisers and the product is the viewers. Emulating commercial channels merely means they are making programmes aimed at a group of people (advertisers) who aren't part of the equation.
Because it has the most applications and tools that most people want and currently use. Because its what they use at work. Because it's the easiest for which to get software under-the-table.
And, unfortunately for Windows, once Linux gets a respectable market share these are all reasons why there could be a sudden flip from the vast majority of people using Windows to the vast majority using Linux. Once Linux has enough users that software companies and individuals start releasing Linux versions of their software by default and people realise that Microsoft is not the only choice there could be a snowball effect. Once that happens Microsoft would have to work incredibly hard to regain anything more than minor market share.
Of course this might not happen but I believe Microsoft is more at risk from Linux than mere market share would indicate,
I don't think you can attribute this to things being more sensible over here. In this instance I think we just got lucky (or got some politicians who have figured out that patents will mainly benefit large corporations, most of whom are American)
She certainly doesn't let facts stand in the way of a good story does she ?:-)
I particularly liked how she calmly stated that the judge "has thrown out all three of IBM's motions for partial summary judgment" whereas the truth is that the Judge basically said "I'm not ruling on these yet but feel free to re-submit the same motions again after discovery when I'll find in your favour unless SCO can actually produce some evidence of which there is none visible so far".
Sadly, by the time such a lawsuit gets off the ground, IBM's Lanham Act counter claims will have reduced SCO (and possibly Canopy) to a small pile of dust.
Since Linux is renown for being stable and secure and Windows is renown for ease of use, do you think Microsoft would ever consider combining the best parts of Linux and Windows into a hybrid OS if an acceptable licencing model could be found ?
Just how important is Microsoft support for any of the versions of Windows for home users ? OK I can see a large multinational being a bit twitchy with an out of support OS but from a personal point of view I've always found fixes for any of my OS problems using Google. I've still got machines running W95 and W98 which are still fit for purpose so is there any reason why I should shell out more money for a later version just so it's supported ?
Unfortunately such a scheme would be doomed to failure (for the vast majority of the population) because it would be "too much trouble". Everybody likes things to be as easy as possible ("one click ordering" for example) and this would just make it twice as difficult to shop online.
I'd say that online shopping is about as secure as it needs to be, given the current level of fraud. Anyone who is concerned about the security of online transactions can take some very simple steps (like not using Windows:-) ) which will negate most of the risks involved.
The problem is that too many people are unaware that there are risks associated with online anything and those people will continue to be caught out by spam/viruses/trojans etc. etc. etc.
I can't figure out why the OFAC, Office of Finincial Account and Controls, list didn't catch this transfer first.
Possibly because, as this guy ran a business and often used wire transfer to move money about, the sum involved wasn't unusual enough to get picked up.
The list matches the "known terrorists" phonetically to customers of the bank
It appears that the fraudster was fairly bright and so they probably set up an innocuous sounding account at Parex which wouldn't ring any alarm bells.
I'm not saying the bank shouldn't have noticed but I don't think it's reasonable to assume that they are definitely at fault here.
But I would suggest that you're not a "typical" PC user, you're tech-savvy enough to be quite happy switching from product to product whereas there are more than few PC users who are frightened by technology. If they are presented with a search engine that gives adequate results then they won't even try looking for an alternative out of fear that doing so might magically break their computer (I wonder how that sort of paramoia came about:-) ).
And, guess what, I bet the search engine that will magically appear, whenever "Clippy" or his friends decide you're looking for something on a Microsoft operating system, will be MSN search. No marketing will actually be required to give a MSN a significant market share and, in typical Microsoft fashion, they will try to build from there.
I'm hoping that the best search engine will win this battle but marketing and OS monopoly are Microsoft's strongest weapons in this fight, not quality.
I'm sure the United Kingdom can continue to regulate the length of bagpipe drones if it so desires.
I think you'll actually find that the UK cannot regulate the length of bagpipe drones since that privilege has been restricted to the Scottish parliment alone. Any attempt by the English, Welsh or NI parliments to involve themselves in this issue of national importance will be, quite rightly, seen as an act of war by all right thinking sons (and daughters) of Hibernia
For those with their humour detector disabled : It's a joke !
Slashdot Mirror
You're showing your age (or lack of it) :-)
Memory was incredibly expensive when a lot (although not all) of the "Y2K" applications were written and it was decided (correctly) that it was far cheaper to spend money on programmers, both at the time and before 2000, than on memory.
Sometimes it even went beyond cost and it became physically impossible to run a particular program on a particular machine because the program wouldn't fit in the maximum amout of memory the machine could support. In that case it was a question of "lose 50 bytes or the payroll run won't happen",
Cheers,
Jeremy
Are you sure about that ? I don't have any facts and figures but I'd guess things are the other way around, if only because there are more EUians than USAians,
Jeremy
Ordnance is not a spelling error in this context : http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/oswebsite/
Jeremy
I think it would be a little worrying if it recorded political protests or other citizen-sensitive events.
7 2.html)
Nah, it's OK, they just turn them off if there's an anti-government demonstration (https://publish.indymedia.org.uk/en/2005/03/3067
Jeremy
We have responded to no liege here in the United States for almost 250 years.
Hmm, Liege : "A liege is the person or entity to which one has pledged allegiance."
And the USA has entities like the government, flag, Constitution and President. Have you never pledged allegiance to one of those ?
Cheers,
Jeremy
Now someone can steal a credit card and walk into a BestBuy or other store with expensive easily resellable items and make a major purchase and not have the payment method checked, there's the assumption that the person with the card and pin is the owner
:-) )
In the same way that someone buying something with a dollar bill is presumed to be the owner of that bill. Are you sure that's really their money ?
No method of payment is going to be 100% secure, chip and pin is better than card and signature, but it's not foolproof. If you're careful, it is perfectly possible to use a machine so that your pin is impossible to know and, as long as you don't write it down anywhere, there is no way a thief is going to be able to use your card even if they successfully steal it.
On the other hand you could be like the little old lady I stood behind in the queue the other day. She pulled out a wallet absolutely stuffed with cash and proceeded to hold it up as she extracted the payment. She was about 5'1" and fairly frail standing about two feet from a significantly larger person who was a complete stranger and could have been Sid the psycho for all she knew. Common sense was obviously not her strong point (or she was the bait in a sting operation
Cheers
Jeremy
If Windows really annoyed its users, don't you think there would be more of a backlash?
No, because Microsoft has managed to convince many people that it is normal for computers to crash regularly and perform in an incomprehensible way. People don't switch because "that's the way computers work, so if I switch to another computer running this 'Linux' thing that will crash too"
Jeremy
When a government is willing to imprison an innocent man for defending himself from criminals, you should certainly expect a jump in crime.
ITYM when a jury is willing to imprison someone for shooting a criminal in the back.
Tony Martin was convicted by a jury of his peers because he shot someone when that person presented no threat to him(he was running away). If he had shot both burglars when they broke into his house or while they were in his house, the chances are that he would have walked free or never even been arrested.
Whilst I have every sympathy for those householders who are persecuted by burglars as far as I am concerned killing someone who has failed to steal from me and is now running away as fast as they can is not the right thing to do. A warning shot over the head and comments along the lines of "come back here and I'll blow your head off" is a much better response.
Jeremy
What geeks don't seem to realize is that most people look at a computer as a machine.
Oh, I think we do.
And machines are supposed to make work easier.
True
Proprietary software with many features makes work easier.
Not always, sometimes the attempt by some proprietry programs to do everything means that they do nothing really well
Open source software, free as it may be, often doesn't have the features or ease of use that regular folks are looking for.
True but then again sometimes proprietry software also fits that statement
They also don't get how some nerds equate software licenses with freedom fights for civil rights.
I don't get how some folks swear blind that nothing Microsoft have ever done has been wrong. What's your point ?
Folks just want the best products.
No. Most folks just want products that are good enough to perform the job at hand
If they're photographers they're going to prefer Photoshop to the GIMP. If they're authors they're going to prefer Microsoft Word to Open Office Write. If you play video games you are going to want Microsoft Windows and not GNU/Linux.
Maybe if they are wealthy but if they only have a fairly limited budget for software and the GNU/Linux versions of software do what they need then they're unlikely to choose Microsoft alternatives are they ?
One of the most amazing things about the Free Software movement is that somehow a core of very intelligent people have somehow convinced themselves that acutally LOWERING their productivity by using incredibly arcane and user unfriendly applications
Er, have you actually used any recent incarnation of Linux ?
. . is in some way a GOOD thing and are simultaneously confused and bewildered that the other 99% of humanity disagrees.
I'm in no way confused nor bewildered thank you. I know there are very good reasons why the majority of people use Microsoft products, including myself. I do, however, think that Microsoft has, over the past decade, acted as a massive negative force on the pace of technological change in the computing industry and approve of the Open Source movement as a means to boot all the established computing companies out of their comfortable beds and back into the forefront of the computing revolution as well as a shining example of how lots of people co-operating sensibly, without the usual cut throat business tactics, can build something to threaten some well established but very unethical institutions,
Cheers,
Jeremy
I think you missed the point or didn't understand the word orthogonal.
:-) ) both American socialists and American capitalists,
Orthogonal, in this context, meaning unrelated the previous poster's point was that being American has nothing to do with ones political viewpoint, be it socialist or capitalist.
There are (shockingly
Jeremy
Did your 30 UK days include : New Years day, Good Friday, Easter Monday, May Day Bank(*) holiday(x2) and the August Bank Holiday ?
My impression is that IT workers in the UK get approx 25-30 days paid leave plus the eight "Bank" holidays (or whatever they're called).
Cheers,
Jeremy
* Why are they still called bank holidays when the one industry which will ALWAYS have (at least some) staff working on those days is the banking industry ?
She thinks that's its suspicious that a Pamela Jones can overnight transform from someone with no contacts in the computer industry to a leading "expert" in the most decentralized area of the industry, open source.
overnight ? It's been two years since the SCO farce began and, in the beginning, Groklaw was just another little weblog run by someone with an interest in Open Source and a paralegal background.
And PJ is not a 'leading "expert"' on Open Source, her expertise is in interpreting legalese into plain English and it is that skill which has resulted in the widespread readership of her site. She has been successful in cutting through the FUD spewed by SCO in their lawsuit with IBM and, because of that, she has won friends (and influence) throughout the Open Source movement.
PJ's success is mainly due to the fact that her readers, who I'd like to think are fairly intelligent, have realised over the past two years that she does her best to report things objectively and politely, something Ms O'Gara has spectactularly failed to do in her latest article.
Jeremy
OF COURSE we invaded Afghanistan.
Given that logic and the number of Saudis involved on Sept 11 I'm still wondering why Saudi Arabia wasn't top of the list of countries to be invaded ?
That puts me in mind of Nicola Bryant and Peter Davidson's complaint that everybody missed his perfect acting during his regeneration scene because she was leaning over him in a low cut top ! :-)
Hopefully, this means that the BBC will keep turning out more of the kind of programmes that have made its name into a badge of quality and stop it getting caught up in the race-to-the-bottom-of-the-barrel that Sky and the other commercial channels seem to be in.
Amen.
I do wish someone would remind the current crop of BBC executives that they are not in the same business as the commercial channels. For the BBC the consumers are the viewers and the product is the programmes, for commercial channels the consumers are the advertisers and the product is the viewers. Emulating commercial channels merely means they are making programmes aimed at a group of people (advertisers) who aren't part of the equation.
Because it has the most applications and tools that most people want and currently use. Because its what they use at work. Because it's the easiest for which to get software under-the-table.
And, unfortunately for Windows, once Linux gets a respectable market share these are all reasons why there could be a sudden flip from the vast majority of people using Windows to the vast majority using Linux. Once Linux has enough users that software companies and individuals start releasing Linux versions of their software by default and people realise that Microsoft is not the only choice there could be a snowball effect. Once that happens Microsoft would have to work incredibly hard to regain anything more than minor market share.
Of course this might not happen but I believe Microsoft is more at risk from Linux than mere market share would indicate,
Jeremy
I don't think you can attribute this to things being more sensible over here. In this instance I think we just got lucky (or got some politicians who have figured out that patents will mainly benefit large corporations, most of whom are American)
Cheers
Jeremy
She certainly doesn't let facts stand in the way of a good story does she ? :-)
I particularly liked how she calmly stated that the judge "has thrown out all three of IBM's motions for partial summary judgment" whereas the truth is that the Judge basically said "I'm not ruling on these yet but feel free to re-submit the same motions again after discovery when I'll find in your favour unless SCO can actually produce some evidence of which there is none visible so far".
Sadly, by the time such a lawsuit gets off the ground, IBM's Lanham Act counter claims will have reduced SCO (and possibly Canopy) to a small pile of dust.
:-)
The dust might have some value I suppose
Since Linux is renown for being stable and secure and Windows is renown for ease of use, do you think Microsoft would ever consider combining the best parts of Linux and Windows into a hybrid OS if an acceptable licencing model could be found ?
Serious question, not a troll.
Just how important is Microsoft support for any of the versions of Windows for home users ? OK I can see a large multinational being a bit twitchy with an out of support OS but from a personal point of view I've always found fixes for any of my OS problems using Google. I've still got machines running W95 and W98 which are still fit for purpose so is there any reason why I should shell out more money for a later version just so it's supported ?
Unfortunately such a scheme would be doomed to failure (for the vast majority of the population) because it would be "too much trouble". Everybody likes things to be as easy as possible ("one click ordering" for example) and this would just make it twice as difficult to shop online.
:-) ) which will negate most of the risks involved.
I'd say that online shopping is about as secure as it needs to be, given the current level of fraud. Anyone who is concerned about the security of online transactions can take some very simple steps (like not using Windows
The problem is that too many people are unaware that there are risks associated with online anything and those people will continue to be caught out by spam/viruses/trojans etc. etc. etc.
I can't figure out why the OFAC, Office of Finincial Account and Controls, list didn't catch this transfer first.
Possibly because, as this guy ran a business and often used wire transfer to move money about, the sum involved wasn't unusual enough to get picked up.
The list matches the "known terrorists" phonetically to customers of the bank
It appears that the fraudster was fairly bright and so they probably set up an innocuous sounding account at Parex which wouldn't ring any alarm bells.
I'm not saying the bank shouldn't have noticed but I don't think it's reasonable to assume that they are definitely at fault here.
But I would suggest that you're not a "typical" PC user, you're tech-savvy enough to be quite happy switching from product to product whereas there are more than few PC users who are frightened by technology. If they are presented with a search engine that gives adequate results then they won't even try looking for an alternative out of fear that doing so might magically break their computer (I wonder how that sort of paramoia came about :-) ).
And, guess what, I bet the search engine that will magically appear, whenever "Clippy" or his friends decide you're looking for something on a Microsoft operating system, will be MSN search. No marketing will actually be required to give a MSN a significant market share and, in typical Microsoft fashion, they will try to build from there.
I'm hoping that the best search engine will win this battle but marketing and OS monopoly are Microsoft's strongest weapons in this fight, not quality.
I'm sure the United Kingdom can continue to regulate the length of bagpipe drones if it so desires.
I think you'll actually find that the UK cannot regulate the length of bagpipe drones since that privilege has been restricted to the Scottish parliment alone. Any attempt by the English, Welsh or NI parliments to involve themselves in this issue of national importance will be, quite rightly, seen as an act of war by all right thinking sons (and daughters) of Hibernia
For those with their humour detector disabled : It's a joke !